Katamari is my most favorite video game. Penny Arcade is not only an awesome webcomic, but also local, and their katamari themed strips were hilarious. When they announced a competition to create your own katamari, I accepted the challenge. My specialty is obviously cake, so it was only logical that I would attempt to make a cake.

The cake was chocolate with buttercream. The decor was edible: fondant, marshmallows, cookies, poky sticks, whoppers, royal icing, and gumpaste. It’s held together with several toothpicks and probably wouldn’t survive any form of transport.

The detail on the faces is done with food markers, probably the most elaborate example of my fondant skills. I combined my favorite Penny Arcade characters along with some objects from the katamari games. Before this cake I had barely sculpted with fondant. I have a lot of skill sculpting with clay, and I was delighted to find they’re very similar.

The question everyone asks me first is “Why did you miss the deadline?” I can sum it all up to: I had no clue what I was doing. I broke a table rolling fondant, the characters kept falling apart because I didn’t understand drying time, and the camera battery died. There were quite a few tears during the process, especially after $40 worth of fondant began to split while applying it to the cake.

However, I was able to collect myself off the kitchen floor and kept going despite the splitting fondant, and found ways to cover it/hold it together.

My favorite part was probably baking the cookies. I used cookie dough for the famous “Dickerdoodles” and the ping-pong paddle. My friends came over to pose for pictures and eat the leftovers, pictures that I decided weren’t appropriate for this site.

I was most proud of the character detail. I recreated 9 characters from Penny Arcade, the Prince from the Katamari series, making up 20 individual objects each made with several different components.

Just in case there was any doubt there was real cake in there.

Even though I missed the deadline, I’m still really glad I finished the cake. It took 3 days of work, and it came out pretty close to my original drawing concept. I learned a lot about decorating cakes, and if another competition comes up such as this, I know I’ll be much better prepared.